


I will hold you up when you can't stand

by BlackPensils



Category: South Park
Genre: Karen being an adorable little sister, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 21:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14066445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackPensils/pseuds/BlackPensils
Summary: Karen comes across an injured Mysterion one night





	I will hold you up when you can't stand

He groaned in pain as his consciousness slowly came back. The sky, full of dark clouds, appeared before his eyes - it was raining, he realized. The smell of trash and garbage stung his nose along with the faint smell of the rain. When he looked around - moving his neck hurt - he saw that he was in an alley full of trash cans and a dumpster surrounded by black bags.

Mysterion frowned, closing his eyes as he tried to remember what had happened. It was all a little fussy, most likely from the pounding in the back of his head and neck. He must have hit his head real hard. 

Thinking hurt as memories slowly cleared behind his eyelids. They were foggy at first, like an old movie covered in static or a japanese porno where you had to squint to see through the mosaic censorship.

There was the Professor - Professor Chaos that is -, something about a robbery - maybe? He couldn’t quite grasp what Chaos was saying - and then something had pushed him off of the roof. Most likely Chaos, obviously, but he had been halfway across the roof, how had he…?

A shudder ran through him as he remembered the sensation of pure electric energy surging through his body.

_ Right, lightning…! _ Mysterion remembered. He had been hit by a lightning bolt to the chest and it had sent him reeling back. He had slipped on the wet roof, hitting the edge and had tumbled over. There was a quick flash of his back screaming out in pain as he hit something else before rolling off onto the ground. He must have hit the dumpster first.

It was sloopy. How could he have made such a mistake such as slipping in the middle of a fight? If he hadn’t slipped he would have been able to thwart whatever it was that Chaos had been planning. As it was now, he was pretty much useless. It was a miracle he hadn’t died from the fall, but he wouldn’t die from his injuries either. He could already feel the tendons and bones fixing themselves. When he woke up tomorrow they would have healed up as if they were never there - the only quirk that came with his immortality. Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell, though.

With a hiss, Mysterion pushed himself up on one arm. A sharp pain shot through his side - the side where the lightning had struck him - and he gripped it tight, as if applying more pain would counsel it out. He wouldn’t be surprised if there would be a mark left from that blast. It wouldn’t last, of course, but it would risk other’s - in a worst case scenario, Professor Chaos - finding out about his alter ego. That could never happen.

“Mysterion?”

He froze. 

_ Shit!  _ He cursed internally. Of all the times for someone to come across him it had to be now. 

He winced as he looked up and his eyes grew wide in shock... Out all the people who could have found him, it had to be Karen who was standing behind the bars separating the alley from the rest of the street, looking at him with wide eyes and confusion written all over her face. 

“Karen?” he asked, confused. The first thoughts that crossed his mind was, “What are you doing here? You should be home.”

She pushed the bars apart and hurried inside the alley. In seconds she knelt down next to him, hands reaching out to help him sit up.

“What happened?” she asked, concern evident in her voice.

Mysterion groaned, hand squeezing his side as he tried to bite back any noise of pain. “Just… hero-stuff, you know… Fighting bad guys, doing… my thing…?” he said with a shrug and immediately regretted it when his shoulders cried out in protest.

“Does those  _ things _ involve lying injured in an alley?” Karen asked. It was obvious that she didn’t quite believe him.

“It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” Mysterion assured, looking up at the roof. It was higher up than he thought it had been now that he was looking at it again. It was almost as if it kept getting farther and farther up.

That was when he saw that his cape had snagged on the fire escape and a large portion of it was still dangling high up in the air. Karen must have seen it too because she gasped and looked back at him in alarm.

“You fell off the roof?!” she cried in horror.

“It’s fine, really,” he started and leaned away from her touch. He pushed himself further up with his other arm only to double over in pain as a wave of nausea hit him straight on. It was so strong that he threw up right there.

“You’re not fine!” Karen exclaimed. “You’re injured and hurt and need to go to the hospital! You could die! You can’t die! Please, don’t die!”

Her breathing picked up and there were tears building in the corners of her eyes. 

“Karen, Karen! I’m not gonna die,” he hurried to say, putting a hand on her shoulder. It hurt, but he smiled weakly anyway. “Tomorrow I’ll be good as new. It’s my thing, after all.”

He looked up at the sky. The rain had picked up.

“You should get home,” he said. “It’s getting dark, I’m sure your parents wouldn’t appreciate you being out so late.”

“You know they’re too stoned to notice,” Karen said, drying her nose on her sleeve. 

Mysterion frowned. “I'm sure they've improved…” he tried.

He was lying. There was no way their parents had slowed down on their drugs. It might even have gotten worse actually, since all of the kids were ten or above. 

“You know they haven't.”

“What do you…?” Mysterion asked.

“I’m not six anymore, I know that you sneak out.” She dried away a couple of tears that had started falling.

Mysterion stared wide eyed at his sister. “What? Why do you…? When did you…? How… Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t say anything because you didn’t,” she said. “If you wanted me to know you would have said something.”

He collapsed back on the ground and ran a hand over his eyes. God, how had he not noticed? How long had she known for? When did she first learn about him? The worst thing was probably where they were now and that Karen knew that he - her big brother - had fallen off of a roof and was lying injured in an alley in the middle of the night. This was why he had never said anything, among other reasons, because he didn’t want his family and friends to see him in this kind of condition. His little sister especially!

“Kenny?!” Karen gasped, grabbing his shoulder. She immediately removed her hands when he cursed. “Wha-what do I do?”

He had no choice but to ask her to take him home, though he didn’t want to. But there was no way he was making his way home in his condition, and he doubted she was going anywhere and leaving him there. He wasn’t used to surviving after such a life threatening fall. Usually life just gave him the middle finger and killed him off instead.

“Karen, help me up,” he said, reaching at her with his hand. “You’re gonna have to help me get home.”

“But Kenny, should you really be moving?” Karen asked, still helping her brother sit up properly. “You’re really hurt.”

“It’ll heal, it will. But it’s either to stay here or going someplace else - and I don’t trust the hospital. They suck shit.” After all the times he’d been injured or fatally wounded before he’d taken up the mantle of Mysterion he’d paid many visits to the South Park hospital. He could, with impeccable accuracy point out which doctors sucked more shit than others, and also testify that the hospital did more harm than it did good. Seriously, the hospital made the police department look like capable officers. “Just- Just help me get home.”

Carefully and painfully slow Karen helped him stand. He hated how much he was leaning on her for support because of the pain that shot straight through him when his legs were forced to support his full weight. It was a miracle he hadn’t broke a leg from that fall, though he was pretty sure one of his ankles had swollen up from the way it kept pulsing painfully with every step he took.

The walk home was slow, not only because of Mysterion but also because of the South Park nightlife. The underbelly of the city showed itself at night and there were areas of South Park one should always avoid at night, especially if you were unprepared to fight for your life. This meant that they had to take back alley’s and side cuts through some rather questionable areas of the town, while not the worst areas, they definitely sported a bad reputation, in order to not be spotted. Of course, both had grown up in shity parts, the worst of the worst, of the town and while Karen didn’t go out as a masked vigilante every other night, she knew how to fight. You didn’t grow up in the town’s ghetto without being able to pack a punch - both of her brother’s had made sure of that. Her dad had even taught her how to use a gun despite not being the best teacher.

“Stop! Stop- stop!” Mysterion hurried as they got close to the house. “We can’t go through the front door, you’ll have to drop me outside my window.”

“Why?” Karen asked. “Mom and dad are probably asleep or fucking.”

Mysterion frowned disapprovingly at her choice of words - not that she was wrong, mind you, just that he didn’t want to hear those words from his ten year old sister.

“Yeah, but Kevin could still be awake, I can’t risk it.”

“Okay,” she finally said and led him behind the house. They had to sneak by the front door - the tunnel he usually used was full of hobo’s who would definitely notice them - and through the door leading to the backyard to get to Kenny’s window.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” she said as she carefully placed him on the ground. He hissed in pain as he leaned against the wall, but nodded. Then she disappeared back the way they came.

It didn’t take long before she appeared to open the window. Mysterion pushed himself up and let her help him in. He landed on his bed with a loud groan mixed with a sigh. Finally back.

“Kenny…?” Karen asked. He opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“Thanks,” he said, removing his mask and pulling down his hood. “That would have been a pain to do all by myself.”

She smiled and then gasped. He couldn’t see what it was she was pointing at but there was obviously something on his neck. “I’ll get the first aid kit!” she exclaimed and ran out of the room before he could stop her.

They had a first aid kit?

He reached for the top drawer in his nightstand and pulled out a small mirror with a long crack running through it. He carefully moved it so he could see his own neck and saw a large bruise shaping from the back to about underneath his ear, and he shivered to think where it had come from.

Karen came barreling into the room - closing the door behind her, thankfully, because there was loud banging in the background. She put a tin box with a barbie on at the foot of his bed and opened it. It was full of small jars of different sizes all from different kinds of toys or DIY’s she’d had when she was younger and kept around. They were full of small salves and liquids.

“What are those?” Kenny asked, feeling more like himself than Mysterion without the mask on.

“Oh, they’re… uhm… they’re my hobby,” Karen said, blushing. “I’ve been experimenting with herbs.”

Kenny raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

She nodded and grabbed a jar. She opened it and smelled it before motioning for him to removing the remainder of his cape. “It’s something I’ve been experimenting with lately, after I found out about… about you and… you know,” she said as she carefully started applying the salve on his bruise.

“Where did you learn to do this?” It wasn’t like they had any books about this sort of thing, unless you counted the few magazines about drugs that their parents kept around the house.

“Some are from mom and dad.” Kenny frowned at that, glaring at the door. “The other is from books at school or the library or the internet. Oh! Henrietta helped, too!”

Yeah, that sounded like something she would do if Karen had asked, surprisingly. After the whole Casa Bonita incident four years ago it was clear that Henrietta had, however small, a soft spot for Karen. Probably because the girl idolized the older after the incident, she probably hadn’t had too much against helping Karen learning about herbs.

He would have to have a talk with Henrietta about this. To make sure that she didn’t teach Karen some stupid black magic witchcraft corruption shit, or similar stuff.

“There,” Karen said, closing the jar and putting it back in the tin box. “Now show me the rest.”

“What?” Kenny asked, snapping out of his thoughts.

“Show me the rest. You fell off a roof, there is no way you don’t have more bruises! Show me so I can help.”

“Karen, you don’t have to…”

“But I want to! And I can,” she interrupted.

He sighed and removed his shirt and gloves. He was right about the lightning leaving a mark among other things. A long flower like cursive, kind off frosty, pattern adorned the right side of his chest from his collarbone to his lower ribs. There were a few other bruises as well, mostly on the back and the side that had collided with the dumpster.

Karen was quick to get to work covering the bruises and wounds with different salves that she went through. Some she just looked at the label and put back while other’s she pondered for a while before either deciding to use them or not.

“What are in those?” Kenny asked again, nodding towards the jars.

“They’re different ointments and, you know, that sort of thing. They’re for different things, like bruises and scars and wounds and burns, and those sort of… uhm, things,” Karen said, shrugging. She looked embarrassed to talk about it as if it was something she had to hide.

“You’re really good at it though, right?” Kenny said more than asked. Karen looked up at him. “You seem to know what you are doing.”

She bit her lip. “I’ve only ever tried them on myself,” she said as she finished with the last bruise. “I’m, I haven’t tried… I haven’t told anyone,” she admitted.

“Why not?”

She slouched, her shoulders slumped and she looked away. Her mouth was a tin line. “Because people would think badly of me,” she whispered.

_ Right,  _ Kenny thought. The prejudice against people with powers was still high. The government were on an all out hunt for those people with powers. Publicly they said it was for  _ cooperative reasons _ and  _ internal relations _ but Kenny had a hard time believing they weren’t doing it for experimentation. It was comical that all the comic books were right about societal prejudice.

If Karen came out about her interest in herbology - he believed that was what it was called - and her obvious knowledge in the subject from the amount of ointments and salves she already had to choose from, it was just a matter of time before she would be called out as a witch. Kenny could tell with certainty that Karen wasn’t a witch. She would have told him - or more specifically, she would have told Mysterion.

As a child, when he had first donned the mask, his priority had been to protect Karen. That had been his sole purpose and she had told him everything. If she had been a witch she would have told him about power surges or strange occurrences happening. She was too old to not have had any signs appear if that was the case.

“You can count on me to keep your secret,” Kenny said with a smile.

“Thank you, Kenny,” she said and hugged him.

After giving him a salve to put on his bruises the next morning - she promised to help with the ones on his back, despite him saying that it wouldn’t be a need for it - she said goodnight and left the room.

Kenny fell back onto the bed, his back protested but not as much as he thought it would - an indication that his healing was already kicking in or that Karen’s salve were better than he thought. Karen knew about him and Mysterion and she had known for a while. For so long in fact that she had been learning how to learn herbology to be able to treat his wounds in such a case as tonight.

He tried to pinpoint the exact moment, or at least an approximate period of time in which Karen had started acting different around him, but couldn’t find anything. Either Karen was a really good actor or he just hadn’t paid enough attention to notice.

By Cthulhu had he fucked up bad.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I came up while play 'The Fractured but Whole' and some other similar AU's on tumblr. But few of them pay any attention to Kenny's relationship with Karen and what would happen if she knew. This is my take on it.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.


End file.
